Scott Dinsmore of Live Your Legend fame died this week and it has rocked the business blogosphere. He was a shining light and an inspiration to everyone to follow your passion to do good things in the world.
Jonathan Fields has an interview with him from his Good Life Project here.
I listened to it this morning and this is what it brought up for me
It takes a community to grow a business
Doing this kind of work is hard. Really hard. Unless you do it, you don’t understand why. It’s not the steps of setting up a website, marketing and building a strong business model that is hard, All that is simple and relatively easy. It’s the sitting down, opening a vein and bleeding creativity that is hard. (There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed. – Ernest Hemingway)
It doesn’t matter what kind of business you run, it is still you. You are the one who, at the end of the day, must stand behind everything that happens in your business.
You can’t do this if you don’t have people around you willing and able to be your cheerleaders. You have enough naysayers and devil advocates in your own brain. You don’t need them outside of you. It doesn’t help that the people around you want the best for you and they believe they are helping you be ‘realistic’ when they tell you to get a job, because we all know that is the only way to navigate the world (spoken with an ironic tone). Sure there are a few who make it, those other people, the exceptions. They are different, they are not you (more ironic tone).
I know this, I have been fortunate enough to be involved in several very strong communities. I wouldn’t have done many of the amazing things I have done without the love and support of my communities.
Scott talks about how meeting Leo Babauta and Jonathan Fields changed him and made him realize that if he kept at it and did the work then he could succeed – the possibility was true. It’s not the doing of the work that is hard, regardless of what that work is, it is believing that the work you do actually makes a difference, that it will give you a result in the end. That is the hard part.
I got to be a part of a Hangout with Jonathan Fields where 6 of us discussed his book Uncertainty . I know what Scott is talking about. I have had the pleasure of meeting guys like Jonathan, Mitch Joel and Seth Godin, is to see that the only difference is that they did and do the work, they put themselves out there and that act helps others.
I have a duty to follow my passion
I know the importance of community. It’s why I do what I do with the Lunch & Learns, the HUB and this community, the Business Owners Success Club. But the gremlins in my head hold me back, because, really, who am to offer you any real help? I’m not Seth or Jonathan, or Mitch or Nilofer.
So I spend days not doing what I know I need to do. Which is to reach out to you and offer you a shoulder, an ear, a big hug and a cheer. And ask you to join. I know you will get what you need, because I have. I know you will be farther ahead than if you didn’t because I am. I know it’s not anything to do with me, but with all of us, because I experience it all the time.
If I don’t do that, if I don’t reach out to you and convince you to join in, then I am doing you a disservice. I’m sorry.
I need to make this clear. By not giving my all to the world I am with holding and someone will not benefit and they will not go on to help the people they are meant to help. Think about a smile you share that creates a ripple that gets passed along. Your gifts are like that, except when we don’t share them.
The thrash is real
Jonathan talked about the reality of the thrash. It’s that messy, uncertain, incredibly difficult time when you are trying something new, something you are passionate about, but something you haven’t fully defined yet. It’s scary, It feels like it’s going nowhere. It feels like wasted time and energy, because it is, it’s just that some of it isn’t and there is no way to tell what is important and what isn’t. It’s all part of getting to a new place. It’s all necessary.
It takes 3-4 years to begin seeing progress and that whole time feels like a failure until it doesn’t.
We’re talking about the bridge this month in BOSC, as in “Take the step and the bridge will be there” Scott talks about building the muscle of courage/belief/seeing to take the step and to believe the bridge will be there and to see the bridge. Every time you take that step into the unknown, it gets easier to do it next time.
Someday better be today
Because someday may never come. Don’t let fear stop you. Find the people who will let you exercise that courage/belief/seeing muscle. People who have done it; people who know what it feels like; people who believe in you. And then take the step….